Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Poems were never my area of interest.
Forget writing one, I could never even bring myself to understand how people
could love them. Give me prose over poetry any day and I’ll be happy. And that
feeling still stands true to this day. Nonetheless, I’ve somehow grown to
understand that not all poetry is boring, or full of rhyming words and
alliterations. No, that’s definitely not the case. And it took me a better half
of two decades to reach to that conclusion.

In late 2014, Christopher Nolan came out
with a movie on space travel – Interstellar. First things first, if you haven’t
seen this movie yet, you’ve missed out on a spectacular visual treat. Also, we
shouldn’t really be friends. As the movie progresses, Michael Caine happens to
read out a poem to Matthew McConaughey that plummets the movie’s plot into a
deeper chasm. Now it may all sound to hyperbolic but you have to see the movie
and let its background score do all the magic while the poem sinks in. Oh yes,
that poem, and even that oration, is as beautiful as dark it is.

As it may be clear by now, I’m no poem aficionado
and so all that I remember of that poem are these opening lines:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

A bit fatalistic right? Well, that’s how I
like it. Anyhow, here’s the full poem for you:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is
right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how
bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in
flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with
blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on that sad
height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Honestly, I don’t even fully understand
what the poet is trying to say here. That’s the primary reason why I never
really liked poems. They’re like a puzzle within a puzzle, and too complicated
for my taste. Anyhow, so the poem is a little dark and confusing, but it
somehow makes perfect sense when you are watching the movie.

I’m still skeptical about poetry because
everybody says it’s so good and yet all I can see is a bunch of fancy words
stuck together across small paragraphs of 2-3 lines. And then you have sonnets
and whatnot! However, I’m trying to change this illusion and would love it if
you can send across a couple of your favorite poems – the ones that make sense
to a reader like me.

And no, this is not a thought-provoking
piece that will make you ponder over something life-changing. This was just a
thought itching in my head that I had to reach out to and give a good scratch.
There you have it. Go on now, off to whatever you are supposed to be doing.
Farewell.